SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 14: The Canada immigration & refugees board has decided to deport a Pakistani, Fahim Kayani, 28, who was involved in a terrorism investigation.

He was ordered deported after admitting that he obtained his Canadian student visa through misrepresentation.

Fahim Kayani, whose apartment was adorned with airplane schematics and pictures of guns, became the first of 21 suspects, most of them Pakistanis, ordered out of Canada as a result of a counter-terrorism probe called Project Thread. Three other Pakistanis, Dr Mohammad Naeem, Mohammad Akhtar and Saif Ullah Khan were released on bail earlier.

Mr Kayani admitted that he had submitted fake documents to the immigration department claiming that he was a student of the Ottawa Business College.

But at the brief immigration hearing in Toronto that decided his fate, no mention was made of the national security concerns. When Kayani first appeared before the board on Aug 21, 2003, a government official called him a possible “threat to the security of Canada”.

Canadian authorities are investigating what they describe as a network of 31 men who have been living illegally in Canada for four years pretending as students of the Ottawa Business College.